I don’t want to plan this poem
Mammy mammy
I just want to find you in it
Sitting in a nutshell
I don’t want to plan anything mammy
And that’s why I’m walking around
With a rich girls bruises
And that’s why I’m walking around
With my eyes closed
Running into
Every year of life
Like a herd in a terror run
I’m stampeding mammy
Maybe it’s the Indian in me
I’m turning more Indian mammy
Have you noticed
You’re so dark too with your
Black mans hair
And your black mans eye
And your black mans soul
Crooning motown
The way black people mean it
And well maybe
The pain is making us more ethnic
I am crooning around life
With my moccasins on
trying not to alert the crowds
to my colossal failures
with my braids in my hair
I just look like a hippie
But it’s not the granola in me
It’s the blackfoot
The pounding pain of a people
Shutting down
The pounding pain
of coping
The native way.
I have so much to say today mammy
That I shouldn’t say on stage
And I want you to put your hands on my back
And heal me mammy
With your god power
And I don’t want to have this much to say today
Mammy
Because this is your Christmas present
And I am wrapping it badly
I want to make up rhymes
That dress you up in
a literal picture of how
precious you are to this whole room
but I can’t mammy
I am not ok
I am not ok
And I can’t write anything without that coming out
Like a pow wow ripping right from my gut
My feet are shuffling along
And my heart is lying on the sidewalk
Outside of the drugstore
Begging for Listerine
Just anything to numb me
You know
I wonder if I have spent so much of my life
Trying to make men love me
That I have gotten too good at it
And now I can’t keep the wrong ones off me
Or the right ones off me
And there’s boys in my lap
And on my mouth
And in my body
And on my tits
And theres boys rampaging around every part of me
Keeping me up
And I am worn out
It is 5am
And I have had enough customers
You know mammy
I have had enough customers now
That its getting to the point where
I can’t barricade that flood back
I have had enough customers now mammy
I am tired
And I want to curl up
Somewhere where they can’t get to me.
Because out in the world they all get to me
I hold the door open in my clingy robe
I beg them to come in.
Have you seen my son lately mammy?
Do you think I deserve him?
Do you
Do you think acting like a 16 year old is good for him?
Do you
Do you think its ok to be raised
By someone who is wilting?
I want to make him a little cushion
That wraps around him
And keeps him cozy
And cushioned
From his sad mommy
And the little knives in the air
That turn out to be reality
When I was younger
I used to wish something hard would happen
So I could capture some character
Like a bug in a jar
I didn’t get it mammy
That the hard stuff
Steals your character away
I am not ok
I am not ok
I said goodbye to john today
And saw the shell of a man that
Thrived before he met me
The great destroyer of men
The great atom bomb on the healthy male
Oh alice schwarz
Don’t let her make you think
The girls a gift
The girls a fucking curse
Don’t let her make you think
That the stars are shining brighter
When you’re wrapped up with her
Sky gazing at the beach
Don’t let her make you think
That she loves you better than other girls
Just wait boy
Just wait boy
She will love you so much worse
She will make you beg for years
Yelling through your wounds
That she was so good for you
And I see this in the face of a man that
I never wanted to see it in
And it just confirms it all mammy
You know
That I have to stop running
So fucking fast from myself
That the rez is what the rez does
Because of generations of pain
Passed on through a bottle
And blankets
And one day
We have to sit down with it
With a peace pipe
And talk
And listen
And you
You faced bigger giants than this
And won
A little black female david
You are the most unlikely
Kind of champion
And it gives me hope
That I can get rougher
And rougher still
That I can make my armour
and look like a fool
poised for a battle against no one
because perhaps there is a tool
that you find in steadier times
to unscrew
and unscrew
until you are sitting on the sidewalk
in your street clothes
laughing at will
and so tonight
I’m crawling into that walnut
Or the hope that I find one
And rocking away with you
Until we feel a little better
A little more ok
A little more ok